"How are you?" stimulates a blog post reply

It's dangerous to ask a blogger a simple question. Four words, "How are you, Brian?," can lead to a much longer reply. Not only can: they are. A few days ago Suzanne ended her comment on a post with:

How are you, Brian? It's lovely to see you continue to blog so enthusiastically! Apparently, you are thriving.

Suzanne (and anyone else who cares), you're right. I am indeed thriving.

Each and every day I prove to myself that believing in God or any other form of religiosity is absolutely unnecessary for living a happy, meaningful, satisfying, and productive life.

I realize that many true believers feel that without their religion, life would be empty.

All I can say is, maybe for you, but not for everybody. Living in the here and now is, after all, the only sort of living that's possible. Churchless folks like me simply are honest and truthful about this fact.

We don't pretend to be somewhere or somebody that we're not.

The most fervent believer in spending eternity with Jesus in heaven actually stands shoulder to shoulder with the most committed atheist. Where? Here in the physical world. When? Now, 2011.

Having become enlightened to this ever-so-obvious yet easily ignored truth, I now spend my days much more connected to reality than I was back in my airy-fairy longing-for-spirit phase.

I don't split my attention between where I am and where I believe I should be, as I did before. Whatever comes along in life is what I deal with, and do my best to embrace with as much yes, yes, yes as possible.

I find it amusing when somebody who doesn't like this blog leaves a comment along the lines of, "Brian, you're obsessed with religion-bashing. Your skepticism has become a new faith for you, the focus of your existence."

No way.

Usually I write a Church of the Churchless post every other day. It takes me 1-2 hours, typically. The rest of the time, I'm doing other stuff -- enjoying life in lots of different ways. Which brings me to a more typical answer to "How are you, Brian?"

Just fine, Suzanne.

In half an hour I'll leave the downtown Salem coffeehouse where I am now and head to a Salsa class my wife and I are taking. I think this is the eighth in an intermediate Salsa series that's challenging, but not beyond us. It's cool to learn some fancier face loops and other moves that we've watched from afar, but never knew how to do until now.

Last weekend we went to a pro-union rally at the state capitol here in Salem. I took a bunch of photos (one of which my wife wishes I hadn't, but I told her that nobody looks gorgeous bundled up on a cold day). It was energizing to be with a thousand or so people who were committed to political ideals that resonate with me.

Before the rally I auditioned for a part in a video series -- "Salemia"-- that plans to take a comedic look at Salem, the overly boring city where I live. I've been trying to get in touch with my Inner Actor. A question on the audition info form asked what acting experience I had.

I said, "Back in high school, I was in our junior class play. And every day now I try to act like a normal person." Which got me thinking that I need to lessen my trying.

Like most of us, I present a different face to the world than the visage I feel myself to be. To some extent this is necessary, since if I blurted or acted out everything that passes through my brain, my life would get too interesting real fast.

On the whole, though, I've found that it's better to be real than fake. Keeping a lid on who we really are makes us tense, worried, lethargic, nervous, and stiff. Taking chances with self-revealing helps me realize that relaxed openness beats rigid restrictiveness.

My favorite question at the audition came from the screenwriter: "Would you be willing to wear a red Speedo?" Unhesitatingly, I said "Sure!"

So, yes, Suzanne, I'm thriving. Maybe someday I'll be able to show you how I'm do it in a red Speedo.

Comments

[Willie R]

So you've got a package that does justice to a speedo, in addition to thriving?

I certainly don't - nor am I thriving. But hey - that's just the way life is, ya know?

Even though my interjections are largely ignored (for good reason) I still enjoy your blogging efforts.

Keep up the good work!

[Roger]

Willie,

I like your post.

[Blogger Brian]

Willie, only if I get a Speedo-ized part in the film will the world learn more than it wants to about my "package." Until then, this will remain a secret between me and our bathroom mirror.

As to your comments being ignored, hey, I read them. You have an enjoyable style, in much the same way that a unfiltered cigarette-smoking, dark expresso drinking, French existentialist holding forth in a Paris coffee house on "Life, it is shit! A nothing resting on a nothing!" is "enjoyable."

Meaning, interesting. Thought provoking. Depressingly possibly truth-pointing.

[Katy Lyst]

So there is:

writing a blog
living in the here and now
connected to reality
not having religious beliefs
political activism
dancing the eighth salsa lesson
auditioning
trying to act like a normal person
presenting a visage
being real rather than fake
engaging in relaxed openness
depression from Paris existentialism that could be true.
thriving
productive
satisfaction

What remains in the absence of these things?

As Suzanne asked, "How are you, Brian?

Don't think too much about this.

[Blogger Brian]

Katy, when we die this world, and our self, don't exist for us any more. I'm not dead yet, so far as I can tell. So I have no idea what remains in the absence of my awareness of my conscious experience.

I guess deep sleep is the best approximation to this. And I can say, nothing remains when I'm not aware of anything.

[Roger]

What remains or is there, when you are aware of anything or something? Tell me, exactly what an 'anything' or a 'something' is?

I am happy to report that Almighty God did give that hyena a good spanking. End of report.

[Katy Lyst]

Roger is on it.

I didn't mean death of the body.

I mean, what is not aware of anything?

Are you any of these things?

Or are you the totality of existence? It's you! You never were the idea "I", "I am, or "I am a human being." You've never been any of these which are nothing more than ideas that pop up.

The ideas we have about being a separate person doing this, doing that, forms a template through which existence has the experience of human life. However, what eternally expresses itself is always existence. In its experience of being human, it merely reflects itself. As pure existence it can't experience itself, so to have an experience it needs an experiencer, an "I".

Not knowing this is fine. Knowing and unknowing are a perfect unfolding of what is. The one who knows and the one who doesn't are both appearances. Real knowledge doesn't belong to one who knows or one who doesn't know. A knower comes about only with the ides of time and separation. What really IS is unity, neither this nor that.

The separate person you take yourself to be is merely a story you're telling yourself, and you experience what you believe. What is here? "Here" is a light-ocean of vibrations, but from the experiences of your past, you put together a picture of objects and people that have continuity in space and time.

As a baby you had the experience of light and vibrations, not the experience of "crib" "Mama" "Dada" which came later.

This moment of space and time exists through your conditioning, your history, your parents, and environment. They tell you, "That's how it is here, sonny boy." But it is simply a belief. It appears real because you repeat it to yourself daily. But these things are not really there. Experiences require time, but in this instant, where are they?

What is really real is an undifferentiated light-ocean. Now.

The eternal now has no answers because it has no questions.

Musn't it be this way? How else could anything be? How else could your moment have ever arrived?.....

I move
Space becomes
Times is born
Objects appear (because I have become the subject of space and time)
Duality is established
The universe appears
I identify with objects
I suffer and enjoy

I rest
Space vanishes
Time ceases
There are no objects (for I am no longer a subject)
Dualism is no more
The universe disappears
There is neither pleasure nor pain
I am, but there is no me.
--O.O.O.

[Roger]

Katy,

Like your messages.

Such as,

"Space vanishes Time ceases
There are no objects (for I am no longer a subject) Dualism is no more The universe disappears There is neither pleasure nor pain I am, but there is no me."

---Just total objective absence, which is the presence of as-it-is-right-now.

[Suki]

Consciousness mutually arises with body and world.One cannot be absent without the other two.In essence they are one.Prior to 'birth' all three are absent.In there absence all that can be present is the underlying unspeakable condition on which all conditions arise out of or appear on and disappear in.That unspeakable condition itself never manifests,yet nothing can be separate from it.We are that.

[Katy Lyst]

"total objective absence"

"the unspeakable condition that never manifests"

"undifferentiated light-ocean"

George will find all this mystical chatter completely irrelevant and impractical. He wants clear instructions on know how to bottle it up, use it, contain it, own it.

He is it.

I know, that doesn't help at all.

[Roger]

Kathy,

More wordage, for your files.

"All of us are not 'that', not 'this', not any concept at all. Nothing mysterious about it. Nothing holy.

Just phenomenal not-ness, and the absence of the concept of that notness."

[Dogribb]

Maybe she meant.... How is it that you are Brian ?

[Blogger Brian]

Dogribb, that's an even more interesting question. Whoa... now I've got to write another blog post based on the comma in "How are you, Brian?" being eliminated. Somehow I don't think I'll come up with the answer, though.

[Suzanne]

Hey Brian,

The unfolding story of your life sounds BRILLIANT, especially the Salsa classes. I have a dance most days in the kitchen - currently trying to expand my hip hop repertoire.

When meaning doesn't matter, meaning abounds.

But please, please spare us the banana hammock!

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[Kakoli]

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